Two years ago, a terrifying story about an UCLA graduate student being stabbed to death while working in a furniture store shook the internet. This week, a jury came to a decision about the murder suspect.
On Jan 13, 2022, prosecutors say 24-year-old Brianna Kupfer, an architectural design student, worked alone in Croft House in Hancock Park when 34-year-old Shawn Smith entered the store. The Los Angeles Police Department said messages from Kupfer’s phone showed her texting a friend that afternoon saying she felt uncomfortable about Smith’s presence. Though, the friend did not immediately respond.
In only another 20 minutes, Kupfer was found stabbed to death by a customer and Smith was gone, police said. She suffered 46 stab wounds. Police said Smith fled out the back door of the store but left behind the weapon and an audio recorder.
Prosecutors said the device captured the voice of a man telling a woman to get on the ground and saying he was not going to hurt her, per NBC Los Angeles. Then the woman screams and the man says, “It’s over, it’s over bitch.”
The evidence left behind made it easy for Smith to be identified as a suspect. Police said they located him six days later after receiving a tip he was sitting on a bus bench in Pasadena. Smith was then arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
During trial, prosecutors claimed Smith’s hatred of women was the cruel motive behind the crime, citing a recording he made saying he wanted to kill women just weeks before Kupfer’s murder, the report says.
“It’s easier probably to sleep at night to think something is wrong with him rather than face the truth that this man was on a crusade to hunt, to destroy and to kill for the mere fact that she was female,” said prosecutor Habib Balian via NBC LA.
The defense argued Smith’s crime was not premeditated, and insisted the case gathered such dramatic attention because of race. However, Tuesday, the jury took less than 24 hours to come back with a guilty verdict.
He faces life in prison upon the convition but a judge will decide his fate after determining his sanity at the time of the crime, the report says.